Ratios

Zacharia sat at the small round table, the hum of the airship filling the silence in the room. Every now and then a tremor would run through the hull, a sign that they had hit a particularly strong wind current or encountered something else that they had to push through. It took less than a day to reach the coast, and now they were flying over the ocean, heading south, following Maleatus' directions. He couldn't tell exactly how far their destination was, but he could make an estimate. He guessed that it would be around a week of travel, which made the distance far enough that they would cross the ocean by then.

According to Nayra, the maps that they had, and their rough calculations, their target is somewhere close to the eastern border of the Great Empire. Or what was left of it.

It was very far away from the areas that the Unchained usually operated in, but Zach saw how it made sense. The Empire was gone, and their fall had left behind a lot of resources that they hadn't been able to take with them. He knew that the devastation was great, but things still had to remain. Even though it was probably still overrun by monsters, Zach could understand why they went there. With Berion's ability to move them anywhere in the world with ease, they didn't have to worry about where they would keep their home. It was probably why no one had found them yet. They had likely moved out of the Settled Territories even before they opened the first Dome.

They had spent the first day going over the rough plan of attack, which was a simple smash and grab. Most of them would be a distraction, while the rest focused on finding and extracting Anatalien. Her safety was the priority, they weren't there to enact revenge or to even fight. They didn't make an in-depth plan of attack simply because they didn't yet know the situation. Maleatus' information was decades old, and even that was incomplete. There was no point in planning now.

Instead, they were all gathered together, talking about things that were of great interest to Zach, and the rest of them.

"A tailor made Class?" Zach said after Ryun finished speaking.

With a wave of his hand, Ryun made a window visible, and Zach took a closer look, Naha leaned over his shoulder to do the same.

"This is, incredible," Eratemus whispered.

"You didn't know?" Ryun asked.

Eratemus shook his head. His soul was sheltered inside a drake body of immense power. Every once in a while, he would get a hit by a waft of a spring field of grass, or a scent of burning rivers, always just for a moment, but sometimes he could also catch a glimpse of sprawling vistas around him. As if for a split second he was not standing in a cramped airship, but was standing on top of a mountain, or walking down a riverbank. It was an Image, Zach recognized it.

Though, it was not as if he was the only one who exude power. Ryun had changed somehow as well. When he had first approached the ship, Zach could feel his Soul spread around in a way that he didn't understand. It wasn't like he was sensing the power coming of Ryun's Soul, but rather the Soul itself. He had done something to pull it back afterward, and Zach still didn't have the chance to talk to him about it, but he was very interested in what it was.

Eratemus spoke, interrupting Zach's thoughts. "There are many things about the Infinite Realm that I do not know. I'm a loner by nature, and besides, most people hoard knowledge like this for themselves. This was probably known by many, only none, or very few of them had ever passed or spread that knowledge around."

Zach grimaced, it was one of the things that he wished to change, that he would change. Knowledge should never be hoarded by the few.

Most of the people around the table were, understandably, surprised. Maleatus had an uncomfortable expression on his face, as if he was unsure if they should even be talking about this. Zach wasn't sure why he had shared with Ryun, perhaps he felt like he owed him for rescuing him from prison, but he probably didn't expect him to share the information so freely.

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"What of skills?" Zach asked the question that had been on his mind since they started the conversation. He had an idea, but he wanted to see if anybody else thought of something.

The others all turned to look at him, and Erdania spoke.

"What of them?"

"What role do they play in all of this. Why is a tailored focus granted based on either a Class or Cultivation, but not Skills?" Zach turned to look at Ryun. "I assume that your Skills are not perfectly aligned with the choices you are offered?"

Ryun shook his head. "Not perfectly, no."

Zach looked around the table, and it was Naha who spoke first.

"Skills lock in parts of yourself, your personality," Naha's voice was low, barely above a whisper, but no one in this room had an issue hearing her. They all turned to look at her, their attention on her. Naha bowed her head slightly, as if bending under the weight of their stares. He knew that she didn't like the attention, she was used to the shadows, to interacting with others only when necessary. He reached over and took her hand in his, the rough feeling of the scales on top of her hand contrasted the softness of her palm. She wore her Unique Form, which she had created from traits and pieces of monsters that she had killed. Outwardly, she looked like a mix of a demasi and a human with a pale pink skin. Two sets of horns rose on top of her head and flowed backward framing her hair. Her face had human features, with ravzor silted eyes and sharp teeth in her mouth. Her hands and legs were covered in black drake scales and ended in claws. She was tall and wide, with an imposing and muscled build. It was the form she wore most often, as it was the most combat ready and capable of the forms she had.

He squeezed her hand, offering his support, and after a moment she returned the gesture, then continued.

"Or perhaps not," Naha said slowly. "You can lock in things other than what had been part of you for a long time. You can anchor belief, even new thoughts, almost as if you were making oaths with yourself that you couldn't break. Or if you tried you went insane, broke your skills."

"A covenant with yourself," Eratemus nodded. "I have made similar observations, though I am no expert in the use of skills."

Zach knew that Naha had come out of the Ethereal Realm with new understanding, her time with the Grand Spirit of Horrors had given her insights, she had evolved several more skills to their last tier.

"What of focus madness then?" Erdania asked.

Eratemus tapped his claws across the table. "Were we wrong?" He questioned. "The Framework doesn't provide information on it, it does mention Focus Madness, but it never says what it is. We were the ones who experimented, who came up with the definition."

"There is obviously some truth to it," Selia added. "If people rise to high in all three focuses they go mad, that is an undeniable truth."

"Two focuses that change us, and the third that we use to affix pieces of ourselves," Eratemus said slowly. "The ratios have been known, but we never really compared madness, how could we? When people go mad, they go mad, not all such madness is apparent or even dangerous. It depends on what their focuses are, what they become obsessed with."

"You've been around for a long time," Ryun said, looking at Eratemus. "Do you know how you came up with that ratio?"

Eratemus narrowed his eyes. "The first that I remember was a man who was following both the Class and Cultivation focuses. He reached his Immortal Class first, then started raising his Cultivation. He... He went mad after he reached the Heavenly Realm. That was the first case that I remember, though it probably wasn't the first in the world. It was a wild time back then, when we just arrived. But, the ratio was really established later, after the war with the Third Iteration. We've spread out by then, expanded and started growing," his expression grew distant as he remembered a time hundreds of years in the past. "Two isolated factions went at war. We didn't even know about it for decades, they had moved beyond what we've established as the core at the time. And they... They did horrible things to one another. One of the factions was stronger, they started capturing their enemies and experimenting on them, the warriors, the citizens, the elderly... The children. They had focuses that we now consider criminal, that most Factions ban outright and hunt down. Pilfering focuses, enslaving focuses, ones that let them do terrible things."

Zach's expression darkened, and a wisp of his will flickered out, making everyone in the room glance at him. He didn't apologize, but he did steel himself and nod.

Eratemus tilted his head then continued. "Once we learned of what was happening, we put a stop to it, of course. There are limits and lines that most people in the world agree on, even those of us who do not ascribe to the same morals. They had crossed them, and were punished for it. But their research, as vile as it was, proved useful. What we learned from their acts pushed the understanding of focuses forward hundreds of years."

Zach noticed Selia take Erdania's hand in her own, and after a moment Ryun doing the same on the other side. Something passed between them, and then Selia spoke.

"I didn't know that. My grandfather never said. But it doesn't surprise me. Such acts are far too common, it is the duty of all of us to put a stop to it wherever we find it."

Zach nodded, agreeing with her.

Erdania cleared her throat then interjected. "This means that we don't really know how madness works?" She asked.

The people at the table exchanged glances, but no one said anything. It was apparent that all they ever had were speculation and assumptions. Zach sighed; it seemed like the pursuit of knowledge remained an endless endeavor.